A comic book, a Bible, a homeplate, a chair. These may seem like curious, even random, objects to explore the culture and history of America’s concentration camps. Yet each is a portal into someone’s life containing multiple narratives about a tangible thing that is part of our communal memory. Many of our family objects from […]

WYOMING SAMURAI: THE WORLD WAR II WARRIORS OF HEART MOUNTAIN By Mike Mackey (Cody, Wyo.: Western History Publications, 2015, 181 pp., $18.95, paperback) This is Mike Mackey’s fifth and, apparently, final book centered on the World War II experience of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming. Mackey, who has made his home in […]

What a tumultuous year we have had. First of all, Feb. 19 was the 75th anniversary of the passage of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942, which set into motion the program of incarcerating close to 120,000 American Japanese in concentration camps. So this anniversary was observed in many ways. My […]

Theater is terrific when the many elements that comprise a production come together as a whole, as was the case with “Hold These Truths,” a one-man play depicting the late civil rights icon Gordon Hirabayashi’s life. The San Francisco chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League sponsored the Nov. 18 performance, which took place at […]

Walmart removed several posters depicting the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans after members of the public notified the company Nov. 11. The Facebook group “Japanese American History: NOT for Sale,” which protested the 2015 auction of objects from the camps at the New Jersey-based Rago Arts and Auctions, protested the sale of posters depicting the […]

The Presidio Trust and New America Media held a panel discussion among San Francisco Bay Area ethnic media outlets Oct. 5 at the Presidio Officers’ Club in San Francisco’s Presidio. The panel, entitled “Your Voice Matters” featured ethnic media leaders from a variety of ethnicities and reflected on their respective communites’ parallels to the “Exclusion: […]

In recognition of their decades of commitment to Asian Pacific American community concerns and philanthropic endeavors, the Minami Tamaki LLP law firm — rooted in historic legal cases such as overturning the World War II conviction of civil rights icon Fred Korematsu for resisting relocation orders — were presented the Leadership in Philanthropy Award by […]

Filmmaker (“Children of the Camps” and “From a Silk Cocoon: A Japanese American Renunciation Story”) and licensed therapist Satsuki Ina has started an online petition to stop the proposed fence at the Tulelake Municipal Airport, the site of the former Tule Lake Segregation Center, where persons of Japanese descent were incarcerated during World War II. […]

WASHINGTON — The National Park Service announced in a statement Aug. 17 $1.2 million in grants to “fund preservation, restoration, and education projects” at several sites where some 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. Grantees • Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, Chicago, Ill., “The Kansha […]

One hundred years ago, Gijiu Kitazawa established the seed company that still bears his name. He first worked as an apprentice for a seed company in Japan before immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 22. In 1916, Gijiu and his brother Buemon started the Kitazawa Brothers Nursery and Seed Company in San Jose, […]